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Evolution and the Emergent Self: The Rise of Complexity and Behavioral Versatility in Nature, by Raymond L. Neubauer
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Evolution and the Emergent Self is an eloquent and evocative new synthesis that explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. Lucidly presenting ideas about the rise of complexity in our genetic, neuronal, ecological, and ultimately cosmological settings, the author takes readers on a provocative tour of modern science's quest to understand our place in nature and in our universe. Readers fascinated with "Big History" and drawn to examine big ideas will be challenged and enthralled by Raymond L. Neubauer's ambitious narrative.
How did humans emerge from the cosmos and the pre-biotic Earth, and what mechanisms of biological, chemical, and physical sciences drove this increasingly complex process? Neubauer presents a view of nature that describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. The evolution of the nervous system expanded the capacity of organisms to store information, making learning possible. In key chapters, the author portrays four species with high brain:body ratios―chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins―showing how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. A large brain can have a hierarchical arrangement of circuits that facilitates higher levels of abstraction.
Neubauer describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. He ultimately demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment.
Neubauer also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes of increasing complexity can be found in the "self-organizing" structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence from astronomy indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.
- Sales Rank: #878402 in Books
- Published on: 2011-12-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.20" w x 6.20" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Review
Raymond L. Neubauer ranges over much territory, not only in the biosciences but also beyond and into the physical sciences. Evolution and the Emergent Self is easy to read and accessible, yet technical enough to be of value to a wide spectrum of scientists and students. This book is a wonderful new contribution to an interdisciplinary field of growing interest.
(Eric Chaisson, Tufts University and Harvard University, author of Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos)Ever since the universe began to present itself to scientists as a story and not a mere state, it has sought skillful narrators with the vision to tell us what's really going on there. It has found one in Raymond L. Neubauer. Aware of how difficult it has been for modern thought to reconcile the dispassionate scientific study of nature with the pulse of personality, the author succeeds admirably in pulling off the needed synthesis. Neubauer—a rare combination of scientist, poet, and seer—weaves together the latest information from biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology, and other sciences in a readable and dramatically gripping way. His artful and scientifically rigorous rendition of the cosmic story cunningly reveals to readers how their own personal existence and aspirations are stitched seamlessly into a grand cosmic narrative. A lovely and enlightening book.
(John F. Haught, Georgetown University, author of Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life)...fascinating, big-picture discussion...
(Library Journal)It is an amazing, well-written account.
(Choice)This is the ultimate handbook for a scientist of any type to gain an introduction to a variety of different areas of science and integrate them into his or her own perspective on the emergent self.
(PsycCritiques) About the Author
Raymond L. Neubauer is an award-winning senior lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds dual degrees in English literature and zoology and has taught numerous courses on topics ranging from cell and molecular biology to genetics and evolution.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Pattern Recognition Across Evolutionary History
By Bryan Atkins
I loved this book. It contains vast, accrued knowledge. (I typed up 7 pages of notes.) I learned a great deal, and think it coheres a wide range of knowledge into a palatable, if incomplete, big-picture perspective. An atheist, I don’t buy his deity argument (towards the end of the book and non-obtrusive, trust me, I'm sensitive to that), but agree with him that we need some group-selection binding rituals, mechanisms at the cultural / community level that evoke an emotional response. (me: Cultural rituals that stir the neurotransmitters that foster group unity, i.e., physical and poetic rituals that yield greater group cohesion.)
Regarding entropy and its role in the generation of structure: I’d seen some material elsewhere, but Dr. Neubauer provides an explanation that helped me grasp the concept much more fully. His heated-oil and tornado examples were excellent!
I also loved his consistent reference to the increasing information content of organisms over time, as well as the increasing ability to process information.
The book is dense in the beginning, or was for me, but well worth the work.
Would highly recommend this book as I think Dr. Neubauer makes an important cultural contribution to our understanding of Reality, of what the hell is going on, long-term. Writing this, had the thought that "Evolution and the Emergent Self" is somewhat of a companion work to Robert Wright's classic: "Nonzero: the Logic of Human Destiny." (An intuition, don't feel like writing about the parallel orientation.)
Neubauer's clear rendering of many of the large, repeating patterns over the course of evolutionary history could help us, at the cultural level of organization, better understand, and navigate, exponentially accelerating complexity.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Versatile
By toronto
This is an odd book, but entertaining. The overall idea -- that nature uses two methods of strategizing informational responses to environmental stresses: information through fast genetic reproduction versus information through slower processes (nervous systems and brains) -- is intriguing. The chapters where this is discussed are fascinating, and the 9th chapter on thermodynamics is a good short summary of the work on dissipative structures (Into the Cool is a larger version of this). But overall the book is patchy: there are chapters on the brain, on the origins of life, of life on other planets, and a dubious final chapter on multiverses and an argument on behalf of God/Person (invoking Teilhard de Chardin). A couple of chapters on ravens, elephants, dolphins, and chimpanzees tell us nothing new, but are excellent brief summaries of the state of research into their cognitive abilities. The book would have benefitted from a stronger discussion of the elements and definitions of complexity -- different kinds of complexity and complex systems are deployed as evidence, and the overall forward thread of the argument gets lost (the introductory chapter to another recent book, Complexity and the Arrow of Time has some critically astute remarks to make about the multiple versions of complexity out there). There is also some unnecessary repetition.
6 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Synthesis by hand waving
By whiteelephant
I am having trouble understanding the purpose of this book. One reason for writing a popular science book would be to introduce concepts to a lay audience. If this is the case then Neibauer doesn't do it particularly well. His writing is dry, he lacks any notable gift for elucidation, and he jumps all over the place from section to section. I doubt most beginners could plow through this book. The vast majority of the material has been covered in a superior fashion by other popular science authors.
Another reason for writing a popular science book would be to advance a novel or interesting interpretation to an audience who is somewhat familiar with the material. This is why I read the book, after seeing it listed as a "new synthesis" and a "Big history". But here too the book disappoints. It is mainly hand waving to tie together a hodgepodge of molecular biology, evolution, thermodynamics, anthropology, and astrophysics. He eventually concludes with a strange and cursory justification for some sort of ill-defined religious faith.
To the extent that there is a direction to this book, it is that life evolves for homeostasis. Neibauer simplifies life to two basic strategies. In r-selection, organisms are low information, and thus reproduce quickly and numerously. In K-selection, organisms are high information, and thus take a long time to reach homeostasis, and reproduce fewer offspring. The most advanced types of K-selection can use nervous systems to augment the homeostasis that is genetically coded. If there is a moderately interesting part of this book it would be chapter 9, where Neibauer discusses nonequilibrium thermodynamics, citing Eric Chiasson's "measure of the complexity of a system by the amount of energy needed to maintain its structure". In Neibauer's view, life evolves to make maximize use of the energy available to it, thus becoming a "more efficient degrader of incoming energy." In this way, the "complexity" of life increases with time by such a metric. However, Neibauer tends to play fast and loose with terms such as "complexity" and "information", so that after defining complexity in this way he then uses it more loosely, to support all sorts of hand-waving arguments - including that as humans we are "at the apex of nature."
Other topics covered include high school molecular biology, extremely basic neuroscience, chimpanzee behavior, elephants, dolphins, RNA-world, the purpose of animal sacrifice and rhythmic dance, extrasolar planets, and the anthropic principle. As I said, it's a hodgepodge - and not a good hodgepodge.
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